Shelley Duvall's Tall Tales And Legends: Casey At The Bat

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All Rise...

Judge Jeff Andreasen thinks this would have been a better...and funnier...production if they'd just reenacted the big game and had Bob Uecker call it.

The Charge

Strike three! Yer OUT!

The Case

Adapting a 52-line poem into an almost-as-many-minutes television production
is a dilemma I don't envy the creators of Casey at the Bat. Even padding
the basic narrative with baseball's trademark drag, you couldn't possibly come
away with more than a half-hour show…including commercial breaks. The
solution? Come up with backstory and subplots, something to give the events of
the poem more depth and thus more weight with the viewer. More drama.

The Mudville Hogs are among the few baseball teams in existence as the story
opens in 1888. The game is in its infancy and is struggling to find popularity.
The local mudgnate, Big Jim Undercrawl (Hamilton Camp, Bird, Dick
Tracy) (Stop rolling your eyes, this is kids' fare!), loathes the game and
wants to crush it before it can get a foothold with the popular imagination. He
contrives to buy the only stadium in town from the Widow Bleacher and turn it
into a dump for the toxic byproducts of his mud factory, thereby solving two
vexing problems. Alas for Undercrawl, the pathetic Mudville Hogs have a savior
in the form of the simpleminded Casey Frank (Elliot Gould, M*A*S*H, American
History X), a perennial benchwarmer who manages to break into the starting
lineup only when he tells the manager that he promised his sweetheart, Barbara
(Carol Kane, The Princess Bride,
Scrooged), that if he doesn't have a
breakout game he'll quit the sport altogether and take up a job in the mud
factory.

But Casey does have a breakout game. He crushes the ball and the Hogs have
their first-ever victory. The crowd swells with every succeeding game, and the
price that the Widow Bleacher quotes to Undercrawl grows with every game until
it is too exorbitant even for such a wealthy miser as he to meet. Casey
continues to power the team to victory after victory, along the way implementing
all the bunting that comes with baseball as we know it today: the National
Anthem; the organ tunes galvanizing the crowd to raucousness; holding the bat by
the knobbed, narrow end instead of the broad club end; overpriced concessions,
and chemical controversy.

Casey may make Barry Bonds look like Bob Uecker, and he's civil to the media
and fans to boot, but, also like the misanthropic Bonds, Casey has his deep,
dark secret: before every game, he smears a secret salve given him by Pop Gumm
(Bill Macy, The Jerk, Analyze This), baseball's
biggest booster, all over his bat. Presumably, this mystical potion will help
his judgment, strength, and aim prevail over every pitch to bring glory to the
team. And the proof is in the pudding. With the season drawing to its climax,
mighty Casey and the Hogs are to face the Boston Beaneaters for the league
championship. Emboldened by the luck of facing a baseball team from Boston in a
championship, Mudville anticipates certain victory. But Undercrawl has deduced
Casey's weakness, and hijacks Pop Gumm and his jolt juice, robbing Casey's bat
of the vitality needed to bring home the bacon.

Undercrawl sinks his entire fortune into the outcome of the game, betting it
all that the Beaneaters will win the game, but when Pop Gumm shows up with the
power potion, he changes his mind and hangs his hat with the Hogs. But Boston is
more game than anyone thought, and it all comes down to the famous ninth inning
and a certain slugger's infamous at-bat.

Howard Cosell and the aforementioned Bob Uecker guest star as the latter
(and former) day announcer and his color man. Cosell, as usual, fawns at the
sound of his own voice, while Uecker may as well not even be there for all he
brings to the presentation. Anyone expecting a performance echoing the hilarity
of his Harry Doyle in Major League
will be keenly disappointed.

Waitaminnit! Play-by-play announcers and color men? Toxic waste? Corporate
malfeasance? Juicing to enhance performance? Responsible athletes sensitive to
their influence on the public? This wasn't in the poem! Actually, just about
none of this was in the poem. Filler, friends. Filler. Like the seventh-inning
stretch. While the poem may remain a paean to baseball's majesty, this
interpretation comes straight from Kidsville. The over-the-top performances,
Children's Television Workshop props and sets, and dopey coincidences that
become staples of the game are there to appeal to the very young viewer,
as are the age-old morals of the story: hard work brings good fortune, and
selfishness and evil serve only to crush it. And in our politically correct day
and age, there are no winners and no losers.

Casey, of course, is a hero, and is vindicated of doping since the stuff he
smeared on his bat before every game was only light beer. His big flop is even
given positive spin: since the sinister Undercrawl bet everything on the Hogs to
win, and since cashing in on the bet would certainly have meant baseball's ruin,
the slugger's big whiff means that Undercrawl lost the bet and his fortune.
Baseball will survive and flourish only because mighty Casey struck out.
Awwww…

There are other subplots as well: Casey wooing his sweetheart Barbara, and
Undercrawl's dark designs to woo the ball player away from the straight and
narrow, but none of these are very satisfying. Casey is constantly interpreted
as a lovable galoot with the brawn of Hercules but the brain of Patrick the
Starfish. This is in contradiction to the haughty fellow portrayed by Ernest
Lawrence Thayer in his 1888 verse. The poem suggests a man revered by the fans,
much like, say, Reggie Jackson, and a man possessed of Jackson's pretentiousness
and swagger. It also speaks to the disappointment inherent in the game itself,
to the woe in man and fan alike when the hero can't deliver the goods.

Commentary on the deflation of the spirit when one's happiness is wrapped up
in the vicarious thrill of another person's endeavors is not among the lessons
preached in this production, however. It's for kids! But parents
beware…some of the messages delivered by Casey at the Bat might not
be messages you want your kids to receive.

Casey is portrayed as lacking the confidence he needs to succeed, finding it
only in the potion he believes will give him the strength to excel. Isn't that
the same argument made by pro athletes from the formerly alive Lyle Alzado to
Mark "There's No Crying in Baseball" McGuire to the Amazingly
Inflatable Jason Giambi? Casey had the chutzpah to swear to his girl that he
could make it as a ballplayer and literally gambled his future on his ability to
do it, yet doesn't have the guts to succeed or fail on his own merit? That's not
a lack of confidence, that's a lack of consistent storytelling!

Further, Casey at the Bat could be construed as promoting
"jockocracy." Casey is denigrated by everyone up to and including the
moment he first steps up to the plate. When he starts walloping homers, everyone
loves him. The only people in town who maintain their original assessment of the
slugger are his sweetheart, Barbara; her father, who thought him a dope and
continues to think him a dope, and Pop Gumm, who always had faith in the big
lug's ability. But their opinions don't matter to Casey, not when he can ham it
up to the crowd's delight. When he strikes out, he believes he is a failure, and
the townspeople are only too happy to endorse that assessment…until Pop
Gumm sagely points out that Casey saved baseball by failing. Are all our efforts
meaningless and worthy of mockery only until we do something momentous on a
playing field? These are turbid waters to be navigating with your young'uns, so
have your answers…and your philosophy…ready when the questions
come.

There's no questioning the DVD, though. You get the presentation in a dull
stereo, and an Internet link to other Koch Vision products. There are no
subtitles, no extras, and no commentaries. But who needs them? The kids won't
care to watch anything like that and, frankly, this production doesn't rate the
extra effort. Just sit back and enjoy a somewhat overly convoluted story with
perky and quirky performances (and some hilarious insults from Hamilton Camp)
that aims for the outfield wall.

Despite the curveball that modern sports and modern society has thrown this
charming narrative, its heart is in the right place: good things happen to good
people who try hard to do the right thing. There are worse morals to teach our
youth.

And gambling is bad.

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